Share This Story!

Talk of jobs, sagging work ethic, at Barela campaign stop

Republican state senate candidate Ted Barela said during a Ruidoso campaign appearance Friday that voters in his district want more jobs, but much of the informal talk afterward was about the seeming loss of appetite for work these days.

Talk of jobs, sagging work ethic, at Barela campaign stop

District 39 state senate candidate Ted Barela, in hat, joshes with former GOP state chairman John Billingsley Friday during a campaign appearance at county Republican headquarters.(Photo11: Dave Tomlin/Ruidoso News)

Republican state senate candidate Ted Barela said during a Ruidoso campaign appearance Friday that voters in his district want more jobs, but much of the informal talk afterward was about the seeming loss of appetite for work these days.

“We have an entitlement generation,” Barela remarked, as his supporters at county GOP headquarters lamented the loss of work ethic in today’s society. “We’re teaching people not to work.”

Barela, whose ancestors settled generations ago in the area around Estancia, reminisced about his own salad days with his wife of 31 years, Janice, when the family scraped by on whatever manual labor came his way.

“I don’t have a high-maintenance wife,” Barela said, gesturing toward a smiling Mrs. Barela across the room. “We did what we had to, shopped at second-hand stores. We made it work.”

He said he has done his best to teach his own children the same self-reliance and respect for honest labor, describing how his son at age 9 was already hauling a lawn mower around the neighborhood on a homemade trailer behind his bike as he looked for yard work jobs.

But nowadays things seem different, said Barela, who works as an engineering project manager. He recounted an episode in which a job applicant said he didn’t have time to sit through the application process and only wanted a signature to satisfy the requirement for keeping his unemployment benefits.

Others in the room told anecdotes about housekeepers who quit on them because welfare benefits paid as much as working, and their inability to find anyone willing to trim their weeds.

“Where are the football players?” one woman asked.

“It’s sad when we’ve got 6 percent unemployment,” Barela said, “yet there are jobs out there and we’ve got people on unemployment. I don’t get it.”

But Barela said the same intrusive government that is robbing young people of the incentive to work is also shrinking opportunities for those who really do want jobs.

“The extraction industry pays the bills in New Mexico,” Barela said. But “overreach” by the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state regulators are killing it.

“There was a uranium mine in Grants,” he said. “It’s gone. Copper production near Silver City is down to a trickle.” The same is true for potash and coal production centers, he added.

Barela also blamed the absence of right to work legislation, which he supports.

“I get a lot of calls from people who say we need strong unions and higher pay,” Barela said. “I look at it a little differently. To me it’s about jobs.”

Gov. Susana Martinez appointed Barela to his 39th District senate seat this year after incumbent Democrat Phil Griego was forced to resign amid criminal charges that he used his position to profit on a real estate deal.

Democrat Liz Stefanics of Santa Fe is opposing him on the November ballot In a district where the latest voter registration figures show 50 percent identifying as Democrats and 31 percent as Republicans. But Barela said he’s optimistic about his chances.